Posted
by
pudge
on Saturday July 10, 2004 @06:24AM
from the good-question dept.

MacManX writes "Does the director of Apple's upcoming Mac OS X feature, Dashboard, have something to hide? Or does he wish to remain hidden? Or are we just reading into this way too much? Rick has an excellent observation over at MacMerc. The evidence will astound you."

An 'Alan Smithee' directed film also refers to a film that turned out so bad the director demanded the removal of his name (instead of having it taken away from him, as the IMDB quote in the article states).

Example: the theatrical "Dune" movie was originally a David Lynch film, but subsequent prints bear the Smithee label.

Fun fact: "Alan Smithee" is an anagram of 'i.e., the alias man.'

Implication in context: rather than implying that Dashboard is so bad Apple took the project from its director, perhaps it means the project director doesn't want his name associated with it. Go Woz!

You need the 'i.e.' in order to have enough e's. Besides, if it's not supposed to be part of the anagram, what the hell is it doing there at all? It makes no sense. However, that makes too many i's, which was my original point: 'i.e. the alias man' is NOT an anagram of 'alan smithee' as the OP asserted.

It's hard to disagree that the i's there are the same, but you left off the initial 'i.e.' Which doesn't really change anything except the particular letter which doesn't match up. Try counting the e's in your version:

If you look at Apple's ad text, you'll notice that they've adopted "Alan Smithee" as their replacement for "John Doe". The whole Apple Works example uses a ficticious Smithee family, and other you can see the name Alan Smithee in screenshots.

In the original cut the lead widget and widgetess were supposed to spend their lives apart, in exile, each dying thinking the other betrayed them, not realizing they really disowned the other to save the other's life.

But the studio made them change it so they lived together in a cottage in exile after the King's wife told him she'd leave him childless if he sent them apart forever.

Stupid Hollywood.

(sheesh, the Alan Smithee conspiracy seems a bit far-fetched--if the guy in charge of the project didn't like what he was doing enough to go pseudonymous in a keynote, he has to be either really, really stupid, or hoping to be fired (or Steved, by some peoples' lexicon). My guess is that it's just Apple's new version of "John/Jane Doe").

What did the article prove? Nothing. This is in my opinion a waste of space on the Slashdot's first page. Mod me down if you want, but the fact that Apple employees put in a fake name in a demonstration movie is no 'conspiracy'. Have you considered that maybe they just don't want people to peek at real people's profiles/names?

A nice little thing to notice, but using it as proof for the one who designed Dashboard? That's stretching it...

You're on to something here. Apple has a new rule against easter eggs or other hidden credits containing programmers names. The rationale is that Apple doesn't want to publicly release the names of specific programmers that worked on any specific project, it makes it easier for headhunters to poach critical personnel.

So don't get your panties in a bunch over the smithee pseudonym. Obviously someone got bored creating demo data with the same old names like John Doe and decided to have a little fun.

Now that everyone knows, it doesn't really make sense for companies to allow Alan Smithee to be associated with their productions. So what's the new alias? I'm guessing that if there is one, it's David E. Kelly.

Alan Smithee is one of those little pieces of knowledge that people know because it helps make them feel elite, which is weird because everyone knows about it by now. It's like the way mullets were a big joke a while back.

But really, odds are, if you know about it, then it's not hip and you're c

The DGA decided that the name got so much exposure from the film Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, An (1997) that it was no longer an effective alias; the film Supernova (2000/I) was the first "post-Smithee" film.

people in media, even from Istanbul like me, knows what Alan Smithee is

I was consultant for the TV channel for some movie buys at Cannes. We needed USA movies to air at 2 am for some reason, we bought "his" movies. Well he didn't exist of course:) We figured the freaks at 2 am wanted such freaky stuff from mails we got. Well, I watched alien snakefish who speaks with humans at 7 am, this morning, its normal:)

Sadly, this article: not so funny. However, since we're talking about Dashboard, I recommend going to Surfin' Safari [mozillazine.org], the weblog of Dave Hyatt, lead programmer of Safari. Since WWDC, he's been talking about Dashboard, what it really is, and the development path they're taking.

Dashboard is actually going to be a WebKit application, with some HTML Extensions to let you do things like put a transparent mask over the window and call local code. He's discussing putting the HTML extensions into their own default namespace right now, as well as submitting them for standards approval (well, some of them). It's a very interesting weblog, and certainly worth having on the RSS feed if you're at all interested in the development of Safari and webkit.

I don't think it will, but I haven't done complete reading on the subject. Check out the Mozilla Foundation Announcement [mozilla.org] on the new plugin architecture that will be shared between Safari, Opera, etc.

I think that because it's because it's a plugin architecture rather than a dynamically loaded code that the means of exploitation are less. However, poorly designed plugins will likely still be a problem.

Nah, I understand the difference. The reason I bring it up is because it was mentioned explicitly [mozillazine.org] with regards to concerns similar to yours on Surfin' Safari. The point being that the native code is contained in the plugins, rather than just being located arbitrarily on your computer or the internet.

I also suspect that the plugins for Dashboard items will be bundled all together, much as Applications are in OS X, so that other webkit applications can't access random Dashboard plugins. But that's just a guess.

The native code in HTAs is also located in "plugins" (COM objects), which are "arbitrarily on your computer". The question is what the security model is going to look like and will it work better than IE's.

Didn't Apple along with a bunch of other software corporations stop putting credits in their software a few years ago, to help prevent large competitors in or around Redmond from paying whatever it took to make ridiculously generous offers for those employees to work for them? Wouldn't it be prudent (if that is their policy) to avoid trumpeting all those people's names as well? What if this person didn't turn in the NDA yet?

> Didn't Apple along with a bunch of other software> corporations stop putting credits in their software a few years> ago, to help prevent large competitors in or around Redmond> from paying whatever it took to make ridiculously generous> offers for those employees to work for them?

I've heard this, too, but I think this might be related to two other facts. First, it's impossible for everyone who is involved in delivering software to have their names included these days. Second, Jobs has mand

Dashboard looks like a pretty sweet application. With each successive release, Mac OS X becomes an even more impressive desktop OS. They keep throwing stuff in it that boosts productivity (Expose, Dashboard, Automator, etc) while still maintaining its slick appearance. With all these productivity enhancements, sometimes I have to wonder why they don't put together a less-expensive G5 tower (i.e., less than $1500, let alone $2000 without a monitor) and target the business market. Even at $2000+/system, i

College isn't votech. You don't go to college to learn a specific trade or subject. You go to learn how to THINK. Once you know how to think, you apply that to any field.

The subject you major in is just the vehicle you use to learn how to think. I majored in Chemistry and now, 10 years later, I manage a technology group at a financial services company. I have yet to set foot in a lab for work since I left college.

I find the kids these days that major in business (MIS, whatever) don't really know a whole lot outside of their discipline. Liberal Arts gives you exposure to different fields. If you use your college experience properly and learn how to THINK, then you can use your off-major classes as practive for the real world.

In the past few years I have interviewed ~30 students from the MIS program at Northeastern for internship positions in my company. i have found that most of them have no idea what MIS is and are a bit suprised when they realize they will be working the help desk or desktop support as one of their first jobs out of college.

I suppose I should clarify that I don't actually think ill of a liberal arts education, or indeed of my music degrees. It's just a sardonic joke I have with my wife: how much easier would things be right now if we had taken career paths with more immediate tangible rewards?

I don't expect music (or writing, foreign languages, film studies, etc...) to make me rich, but I do expect to find the life we lead more rewarding long-term in intangibles like contentment, creativity, personal pride in accomplishments,

True. I sometimes wonder where I'd be today had I majored in Comp Sci instead of Chemistry; or had taken a risk and majored in something like Philosophy or History. I majored in Chemistry not because I wanted to be a Chemist, but because I liked it and was comfortable in it (not to mention I was 4 credits into it due to the 4 I got on the AP). I started college with 20 credits from 3 APs (Chem, BC Calc, and Physics B) and it STILL TOOK ME 4 years. (That's because I never needed to take more than 13 credits

But one keen observation: I'm a movie geek, so I searched for Alan Smithee on IMDB and I get that name for directors of some of the greatest movies ever made, several are on the IMDB's top 250 list. 12 Angry Men, the Original Manchurian Candidate, Cool Hand Luke, the first Superman, etc. Interesting stuff.

No.Sidney Lumet is credited as "Sidney Lumet" for 12 Angry Men (1957). He is credited as "Alan Smithee" for Q&A (1990).

John Frankenheimer is credited as "John Frankenheimer" for The Manchurian Can

so I searched for Alan Smithee on IMDB and I get that name for directors of some of the greatest movies ever made, several are on the IMDB's top 250 list.

No, the IMDB page is saying those directors, with their most famous movies in parenthesis so you'll know who they are, are sometimes AKA "Alan Smithee". So for instance John Frankenheimer directed "12 Angry Men" and was credited as such. He ALSO directed a 1987 TV movie "Riviera" under the name Alan Smithee - meaning that "Riviera" sucked, he hated it and didn't want his name associated with it.

If you look in the last couple of frames as the things fly toward the screen. You can see Alan Smithee's phone #, how about somebody calls him and asks him what's up. It is also the number in this [byte.com] article about opendoc, but that was in 1996 so maybe it got reassigned.

i work in the entertainment industry so it stuck out as odd to me. but don't we all think steve jobs, who also happens to be the ceo of a major movie production studio, would know the significance of that phrase BEFORE he demo'd dashboard? most people in the entertainment field know what that means. i seriously doubt he would be caught unawares.

There is a long-standing Apple rule that says that none of the people in a project may put their names into the project anywhere, including in Easter eggs. (And, in fact, if you do manage to get an Easter egg into an Apple project, you'll be in a lot more trouble if your name is in it than if it isn't.) The alias here may just have been someone complaining that Apple wasn't letting him sign his real name. Or he could have put his real name in it and someone at Apple with a sense of humor enforced the pro